Sergiu Nicolaescu is at its worst in this propaganda movie about the valiant Romanian army in the 1945 campaign of the Soviet armies from Budapest to Berlin, well only to Budapest in this movie full of Stalinist cliches in ... 1985, the year of perestroika in Moskow, not so much in the so called 'independent' and maverick Romania
Truly disgusting display of some notable Romanian actors forced ( or maybe not..) to debase themselves in this abomination of a Communist B movie.
Soviet military drinking with their Romanian brothers in arms is something that Nicolaescu knows a bit about, his uncle Nicolae Cambrea, a Soviet decorated prisoner of war on the Stalingrad campaign, had decided to defect the Royal Romanian Army and fight for the Soviets while bringing Russian Communism to Romania.
4 years later, in 1989, Sergiu Nicolaescu finds himself at the forefront of the New Romania, free of communism, in the same family tradition of switching sides and bank accounts.
The film has value as depiction of Romanian society in the 80s and the limits of freedom of expression in the Romanian Gulag in the last years of Communism, most of the actors making the transition to the freedom of expression of the 1990s with the same B movie acting qualities.